The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria is holding an interim “review” from March 30-April 2 in Caceres, Spain, to evaluate its financial situation and discuss with donors the existing funding gap. Today’s sessions included discussions of performance and results as well as demand estimates and resource mobilization efforts for 2008 and 2010. We will continue to follow this in the coming days. Stay tuned!

-Lisa Fleisher

ONE rubbed elbows with some of its many partners Friday at the Global Health Council’s community meeting with Dr. Christoph Benn, the Director of Partnerships, Communication and Resource Mobilization at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (a very lengthy title with an even longer list of responsibilities). The Global Fund is a partnership of many organizations created to increase and disburse performance-based grants to fight HIV/AIDS, TB, and Malaria, and it has helped drastically improve global health since its inception seven years ago. Nevertheless, many challenges remain. I had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Benn after the presentation, and he gladly accepted a ONE band to show his support.

Dr. Benn was proud to announce that HIV/AIDS treatment has expanded; however, prevention remains the dominant challenge. TB poses its own obstacles due to its extreme drug resistance and its complex/ expensive treatment. However, the Global Fund is beginning to see a decline in infection in Asia, though progress in Africa is slower. This may be in relation to the high prevalence of HIV in Africa; in effect weakening people’s immune systems and making them more susceptible to TB. Child mortality due to Malaria decreased 50- 70% in some countries thanks to mosquito net disbursement and increased access to affordable treatment and disease control mechanisms. We are making progress, and looking to the future, it is no secret that we are accelerating.

The demand for Global Fund grants is increasing at unprecedented levels, but with the global economic downturn tightening public budgets, the Fund is now facing critical funding gaps. As ONE members, will need to get out and make their voices heard!

-Ian McGroarty

Commentary Magazine has published a fascinating inside account of President Bush’s fight against the global HIV/AIDS epidemic during his two terms in office. As President Bush’s time in office winds down over the next couple of weeks, pundits, commentators, and the public will begin the process of evaluating his place in history. This extremely intimate and detailed look at the creation and evolution of such programs as the Global Fund and PEPFAR under the President’s leadership is definitely worth a look.

Excerpts below, full article here

Bush’s interest in AIDS as a critical global problem was evident from the very beginning of his presidency. In March 2001 he established a cabinet-level council chaired by his top foreign-policy and health aides, Colin Powell and Tommy Thompson. On May 11, he gathered in the Rose Garden with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo to announce a maiden contribution of $200 million (subsequently increased to $500 million) to a new international AIDS fund now known as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. This represented a 30-percent increase over Bill Clinton’s final budget in total foreign spending on the disease (on top of the $13 billion being spent annually on the domestic crisis).

Although by autumn the President would be consumed with the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan, his interest in the AIDS issue never wavered. In early 2002, he told Josh Bolten, his deputy chief of staff for policy, that he wanted to do more.

-Chris Scott

Monday, December 1, was World AIDS Day. The global community has made tremendous progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS since the first World AIDS Day was observed in 1988. In 1996, at the Vancouver International AIDS conference, combination antiretroviral (ARV) treatment was announced to be highly effective in keeping those living with HIV healthy. Even with these medical breakthroughs, international actors were hesitant to attempt AIDS treatment in poor settings, due to the lack of infrastructure and other systemic barriers.

Fortunately, in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, the global community did come together to reach poor countries through international HIV/AIDS efforts. In 1996, the Joint United Nations Program on AIDS (UNAIDS) began its work. In 2002, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was established, and in 2003, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was launched.

These significant medical and programmatic achievements have been accompanied with promising results on the ground, even in the poorest settings. As recently as 2002, only 50,000 HIV-positive people in Africa had access to antiretroviral medicine (only 1% of those in need). By the end of 2007, 2.1 million Africans (30% of those in need) — and nearly 3 million people globally (31% of those in need) — were receiving treatment. Additionally, the number of children under 15 in low-and middle-income countries who receive ARV treatment grew from 75,000 in 2005 to 200,000 in 2007.

Earlier this week, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced that 2 million people are on ARV treatment through Global Fund supported programs; this is an increase of 43% since the results were reported last December. The Global Fund has also supported 62 million HIV counseling and testing sessions, and provided basic care and support to 3.2 million AIDS orphans and vulnerable children.

These results are impressive, but the fight against HIV/AIDS is far from over. With 33 million people living with HIV worldwide (of which, 9.7 million still need ARV therapy) and 7,400 new HIV infections every day, global efforts must continue to help eradicate this devastating pandemic.

-Rena Pacheco-Theard

Today, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced a new global spokesperson. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, whose husband President Nicolas Sarkozy is the President of France, has agreed to use her influence and voice to support the important work of the Global Fund. France is currently the second largest contributor to the Global Fund, behind the United States.

Since its inception in 2002, the Global Fund has become the largest player in the fight against malaria and one of the largest in the fight against AIDS. It announced today that it has helped to support putting 2 million people across the world on life saving anti-retroviral therapy – a 43% increase over just last year.

The Global Fund’s financing needs are increasing rapidly as countries afflicted by AIDS, Tb and malaria are quickly developing qualified proposals to the fund that are outpacing incoming donor pledges. The role of global ambassadors like Carla Bruni-Sarkozy will be critical for the Global Fund to continue to provide the financing needed to fight these three killer diseases.

You can read the Global Fund’s press release on this new development here.

-Josh Lozman

Reporting to you live from outside the 2008 MDG Malaria Summit…

At the 2008 MDG Malaria Summit in New York today, global leaders in health, government and business announced over $3 billion in new malaria money to help spur the world toward ending malaria deaths by 2015 – making it the single biggest day for malaria announcements in the history of the fight against the disease.

Speakers including Bono, Gordon Brown, Bill Gates, President Kagame of Rwanda and President Kikwete of Tanzania discussed how far the world has come in recent years to combat malaria and how far we still have to go. Peter Chernin, President and COO of News Corporation and Malaria No More Chairman, helped moderate the event, adding that malaria is not an isolated disease but both a consequence and cause of extreme poverty.

Two of the biggest announcements were from the World Bank and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, announced $1.1 billion as funding for Phase II of the World Bank Booster Program and Rajat Gupta, Chair of the Global Fund, announced Round 8 funding recommendations for malaria control efforts totaling $1.62 billion.

In celebrating the new commitments, grassroots support and political will that is driving the worldwide effort to end malaria deaths, event host UN Special Envoy for Malaria Ray Chambers urged the community not to become complacent. While today represents a big step forward, the race to end deaths – 3,000 children every day – is far from over.

For more information on the event and commitments, visit www.MalariaNoMore.org.

-Emily Bergantino, Communications Officer, Malaria No More

An exhibition launched by the Global Fund last week captures the transformative power of AIDS treatment through a collection of powerful photographs and video essays. To create “Access To Life”, photographers traveled to nine countries to document the experiences of thirty AIDS patients before and after they began antiretroviral treatment. The result is an intimate look at what is called “the Lazarus effect” in global health circles: after four months, patients once on their deathbeds look healthy and strong and have resumed their roles in their families and communities. Photos capture the physical changes (in Haiti, photographer Jonas Bendiksen used a Polaroid camera to document daily improvements) while interviews and film cover the emotional transformations. The videos especially are a testament to the wider impact wrought by AIDS – interviews with families and neighbors chronicle the heavy toll AIDS is taking on families, communities and businesses across the world.

These stories bring life to the statistics that we here at ONE know well: in poor and low and middle-income countries, nearly three million people are on life-saving antiretroviral treatment. This is no small feat, especially in Africa, where only a few years ago an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence. Even once drug prices were brought down only 36 cents a day, critics still argued that expanding access to ARVs was impossible in Africa because the drugs were still too expensive, the infrastructure to deliver them was not there and the regimen was too complicated. Today, over 2 million Africans are on treatment, proving that in the poorest of settings, access to life will succeed. This exhibit puts some faces behind those numbers, reminding us why we need to keep fighting until access to these life-saving medications is universal.

Access To Life is on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in DC from June 14 to July 20, 2008 The exhibition will then travel to Mexico City, Paris, London, Berlin, and Rome throughout 2008 and 2009.

-Nora Coghlan

Sunday, Global Fund Director Michel Kazatchkine announced the Fund may begin to loan cash to developing countries that no longer qualify for their grants.

A quote the recent Reuters’ piece:

“By the end of next year 10 countries from the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region — including Turkey, Kazakhstan and Russia — will no longer qualify for Global Fund grants as they will be considered upper income countries.

But some of these countries have only just built up the mechanisms to battle AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria and Kazatchkine cited Kazakhstan as an example of a country which may benefit from a loan and extended help from The Global Fund.

Former Soviet Kazakhstan in Central Asia has grown richer over the last decade from high energy and commodity prices but faces an accelerating number of people with the HIV virus.”

-Virginia Simmons

I’m guessing a very large majority of the 1.4 million people getting AIDS treatment, the 3.3 million treated for TB, the 46 million people who have received mosquito nets paid for by the Global Fund, have no idea something called the Global Fund exists.

I’ve been visiting Tanzania this week, and the Global Fund wasn’t very visible, except when President Bush mentioned it. Does that matter?

After all, the Global Fund is just a way to collect the best proposals from countries, choose the best ones based on good science and medicine, and then monitor success. They have no offices in any of the 136 countries where they fund programs.

So if your relatives are getting mosquito nets, it probably doesn’t matter to you. Like most people, John Moses Nyahenge, a computer science student I spoke with in Dar es Salaam, said AIDS and malaria were two of the biggest challenges in Tanzania, that the U.S. is helping, and that he hadn’t heard of the Global Fund.

“They know it’s the US that saved their lives,” said Pam White, who runs the U.S. Agency for International Development in Tanzania, said about Zanzibar island. That’s true. In addition to the presidential initiatives on AIDS and malaria, the US is the largest contributor to the Global Fund (though France and Sweden and dozens of other countries, plus companies, foundations and (RED) buyers do too).

I do some work for the Global Fund, and I’ve met a lot of the staff. They’re fairly normal people, putting in long hours in an office across the highway from an airport. The good they help people do is pretty remarkable – more than 2 million people are alive today who wouldn’t be.

You can read more at strong>www.investinginourfuture.org.

-Seth Amgott

The head of the Global Fund, Michel Kazatchkine, announced major progress in the fight against malaria today. While more than one million people still die from malaria every year, mortality rates for children under 5 have been cut in half in areas of Tanzania and Eritrea in the last five years and rates have also fallen significantly in South Africa, Mozambique and Burundi.

From today’s Reuters piece:

Insecticide-treated bed nets are one of the most cost-effective ways to prevent transmission of the disease, which is caused by a parasite carried by mosquitoes.

The Geneva-based Fund announced on Tuesday it had delivered 46 million insecticide-treated bed nets to families at risk of contracting malaria this year, against 18 million last year.

It was working to ensure that all African families are protected with bednets and that countries attain “universal coverage” or at least a 60 percent coverage rate after which child mortality diminishes significantly, Kazatchkine said.

Read the full article here.

-Virginia Simmons